Researchers have developed a brain scan to diagnose autism, and in preliminary tests, it appears to be 94 percent accurate.
Brain scan ‘best thing so far’ for detecting autism – Health – Mental health – msnbc.com.
It seems odd to suggest a single set of numbers can summarize a people’s story through a couple of generations, but I’ve found some that can. It’s not a pleasant story. It is, in fact, deeply troubling, especially for what it means for our children, especially those suffering the abuses of poverty.
It begins here:
This is the bottom line of research begun by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, but since built on by scholars such as political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson and the Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman. There’s a good summary of this body of work written by Timothy Noah for the on-line magazine Slate, and I’ll post a link below. But all of it revolves around a seminal concept called the “Great Divergence.” Simply, there was a storied period of massive inequality in our society called the “Gilded Age,” when oligarchs like John D. Rockefeller and the Copper Kings controlled the vast share of the nation’s wealth. Then, they were rich and most everybody else was poor. The above graph tracks how the New Deal reforms effectively reversed that trend, and just as clearly the direction of our society during the past thirty years. Clearly we live in a new Gilded Age, which Krugman named the Great Divergence.
Yet the fine details of this matter can’t even emerge from the scale of this graph. The story becomes most striking when we consider not the top 10 percent, as the graph does, but look at the elite of the elite, the top 0.1 percent. The average annual income of that crowd now is about $7.1 million a year; in 1974, it was $1 million, and these numbers are adjusted for inflation. In 1974, this group controlled about 2.7 percent of the nation’s income; now it controls 12.3 percent. The top 0.01 percent, one in ten thousand, controls about 6 percent of the wealth.
No other group has seen similar growth in income in the nation during this period. On the contrary, income for middle income and poor families has stagnated. GDP and productive output have increased, but by and large, the increase has accrued to the rich.
Yet even this analysis hides an important factor, as does most of the national conversation. The bare facts of this came out in a U.S. Census Bureau report this fall that was competently analyzed in an Associated Press story that most newspapers did not print. First, the Census data show the gap between rich and poor was the largest reported ever, and this is not so much a result of the recession, but in line with a thirty-year trend. By one measure of inequality, this places the United States with the greatest disparity between rich and poor in the Western industrialized world, on a par with nations like the Philippines and Uganda.
Yet buried within this story there is another. It turns out there is indeed a rapidly growing demographic that is the mirror image of the income growth among the super rich. The number of poor people in most age classes is not increasing rapidly, in fact, in the case of the elderly, is decreasing. But there is one exception: children. More than 20 percent, more than one in five American children now live in poverty, a sharp increase over the year 2000.
Again, this is not an artifact of the recession, but a long-term growth trend. And it is confirmed by a study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Analyzing data for the OECD’s thirty member countries, largely the developed world, the study ranked the United States twenty-seventh for percentage of children living in poverty, just ahead of Turkey, Poland and Mexico.
My first and naive reaction is to offer up these numbers to our political leadership and say, “Somebody needs to fix this.” But then I remembered. This was the fix. This didn’t just happen, was not an accidental drift in a bad direction. This is the sum total of a generation’s worth of public policy and economic endeavor. This is who we are, what we have become.
What did we get for this? For one thing, we’re pretty assured of getting an entire generation of kids with one in five headed for unemployment, substance abuse, prison, violence and short, hard lives. The research says that’s what you get when you raise kids in poverty. And we will pay dearly for all of this, because these are our most expensive social problems.
What else do we get? A friend in the construction business here in Montana tells me there’s a term of art in his trade, the “ten, ten two house,” and people in his business build a lot of them here. It means simply a house larger than ten thousand square feet, costing more than $10 million and in which the owner resides less than two weeks a year.
The buried AP story on Salon
Hacker’s and Pierson’s book is called Winner-Take-All Politics
A Mexican therapist has developed a series of antennaed cartoon characters that interact with abused kids. Turns out the kids trust them more than humans, disclose and get better. Worth reading, especially to find out why Dulas wears bunny slippers. The New York Times has the story here:
A Safe Haven in Cartoon Confidantes – NYTimes.com.
It’s been interesting the last few years to watch mainstream science engage mindfulness and meditation, but a new study reported in Science magazine greatly expands that frontier. Researchers wrote an app for iPhones, then used it to contact people at random times to survey them about feelings and activities. The key finding: A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. A more key finding: We are most focused when having sex.
The New York Times reported the study here:
Wandering Mind Is a Sign of Unhappiness – NYTimes.com.
If you have online access to Science (definitely worth having) you can read about it here:
A wandering mind is an unhappy mind
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana, today released a strongly worded op-ed piece commenting on the suicide cluster at the Fort Peck Reservation, a story we have been following here at Good Works. The piece has been picked up at a number of web sites around the nation so far. The entire op-ed appears below.
A sad situation from rural America we cannot ignore
Child suicides remind us of challenges facing Indian Country
By Sen. Jon Tester
Over the past few months we’ve seen plenty of news stories about celebrities going in and out of jail and fed-up flight attendants. But America’s 24-hour news cycle missed a painful story here in Montana.
I want you to know about this story because it reminds us that as we invest in rebuilding our economy, we still have a long way to go to improve life for kids struggling in some of our country’s most challenged communities.
On the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana, six children took their own lives this year. Four hanged themselves. One used a gun. Another stood in front of an oncoming train. One of them was ten years old.
As a father and grandfather, it’s unthinkable. And there’s more.
Over the past year, at least 20 other young members of the Fort Peck community attempted suicide. Let me repeat that: In one year, in a community stung by six child suicides, 20 more kids tried to kill themselves.
Leaders at Fork Peck are responding aggressively. The tribal council declared a state of emergency in May, and counselors have been working hard to get the upper hand on this tragic situation.
But in geographically isolated northeastern Montana—like in many areas of rural America—resources aren’t always readily available. Recruiting health professionals to serve frontier communities is challenging too. And in Indian Country, these challenges are compounded by poverty, inadequate infrastructure and sadly, a sense of hopelessness that should never afflict a ten-year old child.
Hopelessness is not what our country is about. We live in the greatest nation in the world, where we work hard to make sure that future generations have better opportunities than we had—just like our folks did for us. All of America’s kids and their families should have somewhere to turn. Especially in places where resources are slim, and hope can be scarce.
As we approach a new year, I look forward to taking on this challenge. We need to fight like hell to make sure all our kids—no matter where they live—understand that hopelessness and despair don’t belong in any community. Not in America. Not in 2010.
Working together, we’ve already taken some important steps. Reauthorizing the Indian Health Care Improvement Act means that better health care—physical and mental—is on the way for Indian communities. The bill also opens up grants for tribes and organizations for suicide-prevention efforts.
But the first step to really addressing this tragedy is to make sure folks understand that this story from the Fort Peck Reservation is real. The more people understand the challenges facing many of our rural communities—in Montana and across the country—the better able we’ll be to make sure all of our young folks live to their fullest potential.
U.S. Senator Jon Tester is a third-generation farmer from Big Sandy, Mont., and a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
You might think teen-agers’ addiction to texting and social network sites has some serious effects on the brain, and a new study says you would be right. Case Western Reserve University looked at 4,000 students, a fifth of whom sent more than 120 text messages a day. They found links to some not-so-trivial problems, including smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders and depression.
Behavior – Too Much Texting Is Linked to Other Problems – NYTimes.com.
More and more kids are being diagnosed as bipolar and being medicated as a result, but what this really reveals is our inability to deal with the complexity of human behavior. Slate, the online magazine, delivers a thoughtful piece on this problem.
New study shows kids are more likely to need mental health care if a parent is in the military and deployed.
Children’s Mental Health Visits Up as Parent Deploys – Study – NYTimes.com.
I was meeting with members of a Montana tribal council about the impact of domestic violence on children, when a council member described a situation with his daughter’s family. The daughter, in her mid-twenties, had been in a fight with her boyfriend the previous weekend and called her father, the councilman, for help. When he arrived he noticed his 7-year-old grandson was carrying a large hunting knife on his belt. The grandfather asked the boy why he had the knife. The boy responded, “To protect my mommy.”
The effects of domestic violence, child abuse and neglect are well documented. The results of domestic violence can readily be found all across the country and particularly in Indian Country. Suicide rates greatly exceed the national average, alcoholism rates are legendary, and obesity and diabetes rates are climbing much faster than the national averages and defy normal treatment measures. Nonetheless, at least one sheriff’s department, the one in Roosevelt County, understands the corrosive effects of domestic violence and is taking action. The sheriff’s department, along with the Northeast Montana Victim’s Advocate director and the county attorney, have made the successful prosecution of domestic violence a top priority, thereby protecting children from the long-term consequence of maltreatment. For good reason: Domestic violence and parental neglect are at the root of the eight leading causes of premature death.
Policy measures within these agencies include a relationship that puts victim’s advocates at the scene of the violence, but, in addition to the normal law enforcement functions, the team also provides on-going support for the victim and any children from the family. The foundation of this support is the personal relationship between the victim, the deputy and the crime victim advocate, and this relationship is pivotal. The support for the victim and children ranges from finding secure housing through having an advocate helping the family through the legal system and potentially working with the school system to provide any needed counseling services for the children.
A recent prosecution in Roosevelt County gives us a case study showing how this sort of comprehensive thinking works in practice. The perpetrator in this case was sentenced to seven years in Montana State Prison for stalking and for partner or family member assault. The victims were a young woman and her three children. She is an enrolled tribal member and her abuser is not.
The family was living together in Washington State. The abuser is the father of two of the three children. The victim sought and received police protection while the family lived in Washington, but that did not stop the abuse. Washington police responded to two domestic violence calls from the family, and one of the calls involved their SWAT team in the arrest. The abuser is a very large, strong and intimidating man, and he controlled the family’s finances and daily lives. He decided when they left the house and where they went. His spouse was required to get permission before leaving the house for any reason and sometimes he gave it, sometimes not. Wisely, she got an order of protection from a Washington court and then immediately left the state, returning to Wolf Point expecting never to see her abuser again.
He showed up at her Wolf Point house on Jan. 11 and was let in the house by their three-year-old son. He then kept the family trapped inside the house for three days, before the mother was able to call the sheriff’s office. A deputy responded to the call for help and the victim was able to show the deputy her “Hope Card,” the order of protection from Washington. The abuser was promptly arrested.
Cases of domestic violence follow a predictable pathway of increasing levels of violence that frequently lead to death. There are about a dozen domestic violence homicides in Montana every year. In a number of these cases, the abusers killed children. According to a danger assessment study, women who are threatened or assaulted with a gun were twenty times more likely than other women to be murdered. When the victim decides to leave, and the abuser knows it, the situation becomes very dangerous very quickly. Several weeks ago, a Bozeman man was sentenced to fifty years in prison for shooting his wife while she slept. She had told him that she was leaving, and he killed her.
The victim in Roosevelt County did the right thing. She was responsible for three children and she recognized the need to protect them from abuse. Couples in these situations seldom fight only once, and the repeated exposure to violence has life-long effects on children’s development. Children who have experienced violence in the home also have higher level of depression than children who come from stable homes. Children who suffer domestic violence also have significantly more post-traumatic stress, and stomach problems. Children coming from homes with parents fighting have low school achievement and high levels of anger, anxiety, aggression, antisocial behaviors, and alcohol use. They are also more involved with law enforcement and the juvenile justice system. In choosing to leave her abuser, she was protecting her children’s health.
Choosing to leave her abuser and choosing to involve the sheriff’s office in the case was very difficult, but the deputy’s involvement ensured the successful criminal prosecution of this case. The Northeast Montana Victims Advocate program was just as critical in providing the psychological support for her decision to leave her abuser and material support for moving the family out of harm’s way.
It is common knowledge that abused partners have a difficult time leaving their abusers. It is also common for the abused to recant their charges as a way of protecting themselves, but it didn’t happen in this case. Deputies jailed the abuser, effectively isolating him from the victim and thereby protecting her and the children.
Abusers use a pattern of sexual mastery that interweaves repeated physical abuse with intimidation, sexual degradation, isolation and control. In most cases, and this case is typical, the abuse is highly refined yet often times fails to meet the aggravated assault statue but the results are just as damaging for both the abused and the children.
Sheriff Freedom Crawford, Tina Olson, Dan McKee and Tim Rouch acted competently, taking proven steps to conquer the domestic violence epidemic that so dramatically affects our family’s lives and the lives of our children.
John Frederikson is the coordinator of the Montana Safe Schools Center at the Institute for Educational Research and Services.
Lately, my colleagues here at te National Native Trauma Center have been focused on the tiny Fort Peck reservation town of Poplar, Montana. How could we not be. The Middle School there suffered a suicide cluster, with five students dead in the past school year. Then, this week, the event made the news with an unfortunate turn of events.
No one is more engaged in this here than my colleague Marilyn Bruguier Zimmerman, an enrolled member at Fort Peck and the director of the NNCTC. Appropriately, Marilyn was a source in the Associated Press story about recent events at the school. The story ran in newspapers around the state and is available here.
Marilyn was also invited to testify this summer at the Indian Youth Suicide Prevention Summit convened by U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan, chair of the Committee on Indian Affairs. Marilyn prepared the following blog post based on that testimony:
By Marilyn Bruguier Zimmerman
Suicide among American Indian youth is epidemic. The suicide rate of Native American youth between the ages of 13 and 25 continues to be the highest of any ethnic group in America, in fact three to 10 times higher than the general population in a comparative age group. We must understand that suicide is a complex issue with no single cause that leads an adolescent to see suicide as an option for dealing with the problems in their lives.
Former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona has said, “Suicide is not a single problem; rather it is a single response to multiple problems.”
It is important to understand that there is no single response by individuals or single systems that serve youth will prevent suicide. American Indian tribes face a complex variety of risk factors that contributes to suicide among their youth. Some of the risk factors are the rural isolation of their communities, which creates barriers to comprehensive health care and cultural barriers of non-native mental health providers who are not be able to identify with tribal cultural beliefs or understand the historical context of tribes. Currently there are less than 200 American Indian psychologists providing services to the 1.6 million tribal members eligible for services from the Indian Health Service.
Other risk factors include unrelenting unemployment of 50-80% for the past three decades in some Native communities. Chronic unemployment results in pervasive poverty for American Indian families. Poverty is a known risk factor for not only suicide, but also for poor educational outcomes; mental illness; substance abuse; and community, family and interpersonal violence.
Exposure to family and interpersonal violence is highly correlated with suicide risk to Native youth. The leading causes of death among Native Americans and Alaskan Natives between the ages of 1-14 are accidents and homicides; for ages 15-24, accidents and suicide. The National Native Children’s Trauma Center screened middle school students in a school district on one of Montana’s reservations, and the screenings measured exposure to violence and PTSD symptoms. Of the estimated 200 students screened, 160 had experienced chronic exposure to violence, and had clinically significant symptoms of PTSD.
Other risk factors for Native youth stem from overwhelming loss, loss of loved ones to chronic disease, and loss of cultural and spiritual traditions, ceremonies, language and tribal identity. Research shows that loss, grief, depression, and childhood traumatic stress are highly correlated with suicide.
Beyond the numerous complex risk factors facing American Indian youth there are considerable protective factors. American Indian youth are resilient. Their resilience is directly connected to family cohesion, social support that includes close relationships with extended family members, and a sense of cultural identity that provides the youth with a sense of belonging and responsibility for the wellbeing of the tribe.
The National Native Children’s Trauma Center’s work in tribal communities is centered in the schools. This enables tribal communities to overcome the challenges of access to care and provide opportunity to partner with families to promote the overall mental health of their youth. We are committed to the education and wellbeing of American Indian youth, families and communities.
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